One does not get Singapore, not get within a bull's roar—of Singapore and much else beyond Singapore too—unless one gets this:
Agatha Christie's The Mousetrap
Currently being staged—or presently about to be staged—at some kind of theatre housed in one of the iconic structures on either Marina Bay, or else the Singapore River. One hundred to one not elsewhere. An outside chance perhaps Fort Canning Park, where a gleaming escalator will deliver art-lovers under a canopy of trees shielding a mousetrap within a cluster of ferns and wild orchids.
Festive white balloons in the shape of traditional Chinese lanterns were visible hanging from Raffles Hotel this afternoon, strung in sequence under the verandas, the famous five foot ways bequeathed by Sir Stamford himself and a much-remarked feature of the architecture island-wide.
Dame Agatha a name as big as the Beatles and Stones. (Numerous Beatles tees sported on the streets here.) Almost as big as Shakespeare. They do love the English here. Branded English most particularly. A Midsummer-night's Dream was likewise staged a short while ago, almost certainly open-air at Fort Canning, possibly the Botanical Gardens, fans and screens in order to help suspend disbelief.
And it's not just Singapore of course, recently going whole hog for the arts and culture, no stone left unturned and money splashed all over you just name it. It's everywhere now the high tide: in the bookshops, the theaters, cinemas, galleries, restaurants and fashion houses —all the arts. Nothing possibly to stop it. Not Beckett, Shakespeare, Mozart and all the others working with the brightest and best among us now. It's too far gone. Singapore only exemplifies the position—showing too in the back-blocks still what was before, as the pages of this Blog have long indicated.
Festive white balloons in the shape of traditional Chinese lanterns were visible hanging from Raffles Hotel this afternoon, strung in sequence under the verandas, the famous five foot ways bequeathed by Sir Stamford himself and a much-remarked feature of the architecture island-wide.
Dame Agatha a name as big as the Beatles and Stones. (Numerous Beatles tees sported on the streets here.) Almost as big as Shakespeare. They do love the English here. Branded English most particularly. A Midsummer-night's Dream was likewise staged a short while ago, almost certainly open-air at Fort Canning, possibly the Botanical Gardens, fans and screens in order to help suspend disbelief.
And it's not just Singapore of course, recently going whole hog for the arts and culture, no stone left unturned and money splashed all over you just name it. It's everywhere now the high tide: in the bookshops, the theaters, cinemas, galleries, restaurants and fashion houses —all the arts. Nothing possibly to stop it. Not Beckett, Shakespeare, Mozart and all the others working with the brightest and best among us now. It's too far gone. Singapore only exemplifies the position—showing too in the back-blocks still what was before, as the pages of this Blog have long indicated.
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